wore an ordinary tan suit, with no covering on her shoulder-length black hair. Beyond her, the steel door now gaped wide open. How had it been opened? And what had struck him senseless? There had been a sudden greenishness in the light—

The light was still green, a baleful emerald tinge. He didn't understand. He looked down at himself, and found that around his neck now hung a chain from which depended an egg of silvery metal. The egg hummed.

Birrel reached numb fingers toward the thing, but the girl caught away his hand. Again in that alien tongue, she said quickly,

"No, Rett—don't touch your shield! We have to get out fast—Holmer can't blank this building forever. Please try to walk!"

His shield? Shield against what? He saw now that she too wore a humming metal egg around her neck.

Birrel's brain was beginning to clear. But he purposely kept his bewildered expression. Acting dazed would give him a little more time.

"Holmer?" he said.

"He's outside," the girl said. "Holding the"—(and here she used a word Birrel did not know at all)—"on the whole building. But we must hurry!"

Birrel began to understand. They had come indeed, the secret ones from beyond the world. One of them, outside, had hit the whole prison with some stunning force, some super-encephalographic vibration. That was what had knocked him out. But the greenish glow was still there, the force still on. How was it he was conscious now?

Was the "shield" a shield against the stunning force? The girl had put it on him, and he had revived. And she was wearing one herself—

It suddenly rushed over Birrel, the full, overwhelming realization that he was face to face with someone not of Earth. He stared into her dark, smooth face, into her wide, worried black eyes, and he felt the short hairs on his neck bristle.

She seemed utterly human and Earthly, and she was not. The eyes meeting his had looked on unguessable vistas across the cosmic abyss. The strong hands that steadied him were alien hands.

Woman not of this world....

He shivered involuntarily and the girl misunderstood that. She said urgently,

"I know you're shaken up but you must walk! We must 

 Prev. P 13/57 next